Snow arrives in Jamestown from the west, off Lake Erie, and by four in the morning the old furniture-district streets lie under a blanket nobody has touched yet. That is when R Patti Concrete & Excavating is out with the plow, opening lots and loading docks and driveways so the first cars of the day roll in on bare pavement. Salt goes down at the corners and along the aprons where meltwater likes to refreeze before sunrise. There is a satisfaction in the finished shape of it — banks pushed back square, a lot swept to its edges, walkways cut down to the concrete. Then the light comes up over the Chadakoin valley and the city goes to work as though the snow had been someone else's problem.